Publications & Testimony

After 12 years as Orleans Parish, Louisiana District Attorney, Leon Cannizzaro (pic­tured) has announced that he will not seek re-elec­­tion and will be retir­ing as D.A. at the end of this term. Cannizzaro’s tenure in office was marked by his aggres­sive defense of pri­or offi­cial mis­con­duct in cap­i­tal cas­es, mis­con­duct by his office while he was District Attorney, and rev­e­la­tions that Orleans Parish pros­e­cu­tors had routinely…

NEWS (8/​6/​20) — Connecticut: The Connecticut Supreme Court grant­ed a new tri­al to for­mer death-row pris­on­er Lazale Ashby. The court ruled that the pros­e­cu­tion had vio­lat­ed Ashby’s Sixth Amendment right to coun­sel​“by using a jail­house infor­mant … to delib­er­ate­ly elic­it cer­tain incrim­i­nat­ing state­ments from the defen­dant.” The court said that the infor­mant, who had a past his­to­ry of pro­vid­ing assis­tance to pros­e­cu­tors, had been act­ing as an…

The death penal­ty is​“a los­ing sit­u­a­tion for every­body,” actress and Clemency star Alfre Woodard said in a recent Screen Actors Guild — American Federation of Television and Radio Artists inter­net forum.​“It does not bring back the per­son who has been tak­en vio­lent­ly. It doesn’t. It…

Long-run­n­ing exe­cu­tion law­suits have set­tled in Arizona and California, as a renewed chal­lenge to the state’s revised lethal-injec­­tion pro­to­col has ramped up in…

In a pri­ma­ry elec­tion that was regard­ed by many as a ref­er­en­dum on reform pros­e­cu­tors, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner (pic­tured) beat back a chal­lenge by the circuit’s for­mer chief homi­cide pros­e­cu­tor, Mary Pat Carl. Election returns from the August 4, 2020, Democratic pri­ma­ry in St. Louis showed Gardner, the city’s first African-American Circuit Attorney, with 61% of the vote, while…

The only woman on Oregon​’s death row has been resen­tenced to life in prison. On August 3, 2020, the Lane County Circuit Court accept­ed a set­tle­ment agree­ment in which Lane County pros­e­cu­tors agreed to drop their appeal of a 2019 rul­ing over­turn­ing the death sen­tence imposed on Angela McAnulty (pic­tured) in February 2011 and McAnulty agreed to drop her appeals of her…

A pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has over­turned the death sen­tence imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (pic­tured) for his role in the April 2013 Boston Marathon bomb­ing that killed three peo­ple and injured more…

NEWS (7/​31/​20) — Boston, MA: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has over­turned the death sen­tence imposed on Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. In a 2 – 1 deci­sion, a pan­el of the court ruled that Tsarnaev’s death sen­tence vio­lat­ed the​“core promise of our crim­i­­nal-jus­tice sys­tem … that even the very worst among us deserves to be fair­ly tried and law­ful­ly pun­ished.” The pan­el found that the tri­al judge’s fail­ure to ques­tion 9 of the…

As July 2020 came to a close, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment issued two more notices of exe­cu­tion and a coun­ty judge in Texas report­ed­ly issued a new death war­rant for a death-row pris­on­er whose pre­vi­ous­ly scheduled execution…

A promi­nent South Georgia pros­e­cu­tor, laud­ed for his suc­cess in cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions, has a his­to­ry of mis­con­duct in those cas­es, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution inves­tiga­tive report has dis­closed. Longtime Brunswick Judicial Circuit Assistant District Attorney John B. Johnson III, who joined the five-coun­­ty prosecutor’s office in 1977,​“has a dark lega­cy of prob­lem cas­es,” the paper reports, including repeatedly…